Pentagon insulted by claims about Lynch rescue

Pentagon spokesman Marine Lt. Col. Dave Lapan said it was "ludicrous and insulting" for the BBC to suggest the rescue was staged and hyped up.

"The thing that is most insulting is the suggestion that we would put U.S. service members at risk to stage such an event. This was a real rescue under a combat situation," Lapan told Reuters. "In addition, the war was not going badly."

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This is interesting not because the Pentagon is refuting the story (this was to be expected), but for a couple of other reasons.

First, it is surprising that the Pentagon is finally responding more than a week after the story first broke. Given the high level of propaganda and media manipulation coming from Washington these days, I would have bet that the Pentagon could have been able to put some pro-America spin on the story immediately--this is not unreasonable to expect; the Clinton administration turned rapid-response spin into a high art, and the Bush administration has emulated many of their tricks. The Pentagon's delay in responding suggests confusion. Maybe they were waiting to see if the story would simply die off by itself--it didn't. Perhaps they're being honest when they deny the story: this is out of character, however; the military has been quite effective for the last decade or so at presenting a cool, professional appearance to the media. I think what happened is that the story, in fact, is true, and the Pentagon simply thought that they weren't going to get caught. They're getting cocky.

Second, it's pretty amazing that the Lynch show story has broken into the headlines of the US press at all. The media have been routinely ignoring most anti-Bush stories for months now. That the looting tales, the Rumsfeld/Pentagon schism, and the Lynch show have all made it through the gatekeepers is news in and of itself. What's going on here? Perhaps the media have finally started getting bored with Bush the warrior king. Perhaps it's a bit more sinister: maybe the capitalists really are angry with Bush (see the REAL POWER post, below), and they have allowed the press more freedom to report news that could discredit the White House.

The truly maddening thing about all this is that Americans are left to speculate about the motivations of two extremely powerful American institutions, the Pentagon and the press. If we were living in anything even remotely resembling a democracy, there would be little need for this.

In a democracy, powerful institutions are transparent.

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